


Waking

by Miss_Peg



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: F/M, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Memories, Memory Palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Peg/pseuds/Miss_Peg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Jane revisited memories of his family</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hollygolightly (a very belated birthday fic), also for the Paint It Red April Monthly Challenge.

Patrick Jane closed his eyes. The CBI bullpen melted away until he saw nothing but the colours of his eyelids. The sound of idle chatter died down between Cho and Rigsby and the soft, sweet smell of Van Pelt's new perfume dissipated into the air.

In just a few moments he was waking up on the couch at his Malibu home; Angela handed him a cup of tea whilst Charlotte played with some Legos on the floor.

'Danny's coming for dinner on Saturday,' Angela said, sitting down beside him.

Jane wrapped an arm around her shoulder and held her close. Regardless of ill feeling towards his brother-in-law, the smile on his wife's lips left him feeling a little breathless. Jane nuzzled her neck, planting brief kisses along her jawline until her laughter filled the silence.

He glanced at his little girl who watched them with curious eyes; adamant not to be left out of the fun, she jumped to her feet and ran the couple yards towards the couch.

'Daddy,' Charlotte shouted as she jumped onto his lap and found her place against his heart.

He closed his eyes for the briefest second.

A loud bang startled him and he opened his eyes once more, the Elvis stain of the bullpen ceiling clearly visible above.

x

The car moved seamlessly as Lisbon pulled onto the highway. Jane turned on the radio and nudged a couple of buttons before turning it off again. Lisbon was in a mood and though he'd attempted to squeeze some conversation out of her, she'd remained silent.

Eventually, Jane gave up his quest and closed his eyes. There was a memory waiting for him and he wasn't about to deny it its right to attention.

'Daddy, Daddy, watch me go higher,' Charlotte shouted from a rung of the jungle gym. He did as he was told and watched with full attention as she reached out her little arms for the next bar.

Had Angela been with them, she probably would have warned Charlotte about climbing too high. She was barely five after all and the jungle gym was unusually high. But Jane knew that exploration was important for a child and he was there, stood at the bottom to catch her if she fell.

'Daddy,' Charlotte said again, her voice quieter as she clung tightly to the bars, her eyes filled with tears and she stared at him longingly.

It didn't take much more to throw himself at the frame, the constriction of his three piece suit doing nothing to stop him from reaching his child. He scooped her up and carried her down to the ground.

'It's okay, you're okay,' he soothed, closing his eyes and holding her tightly.

A blaring horn filled the silence, pulling him from that moment with his daughter. Jane fought for a second against it, but as he always did, he opened his eyes.

'Get out of the way!' said Lisbon, her hand pressed down on the horn again.

Lisbon glared at him, at the road in front and at the car illegally parked on the sidewalk. At least she was talking again.

x

'Thank you, Lisbon,' said Jane as she helped him onto the makeshift bed in the attic. She balled his jacket up and rested it under his swollen ankle.

'Get some rest,' she said. 'I'll get Grace to bring up an ice pack.'

'Yes, Boss,' he replied, his head sinking into the pillow. A gentle throbbing passed through his ankle. 'Not every day you sprain your ankle catching a killer.'

'Catching a killer?' Lisbon laughed adjusting the jacket and adding her own. 'Rigsby caught the killer, you proved that you need to visit a gym.'

'Hey, no fair,' said Jane, closing his eyes.

Lisbon's farewell faded into a box of memories, Jane read the labels on each, trying to decide which one he would explore today.

'Don't walk away from me, Angela,' he shouted as he followed her along the street.

Darkness had fallen hours ago; streetlamps lit up the boardwalk making the evening appear all the more special. They'd left the restaurant in a hurry after Jane had told Angela that he didn't think marriage was all that important.

'I will do what I damn well like,' Angela shouted behind her. 'It's not like you're my husband.'

His plan had obviously backfired, something which he hadn't anticipated despite his very unique set of skills. Angela walked too fast and he struggled to keep up until he was jogging along the path after her.

'Please, just,' he said, his words disappearing into the warm night air. He tried again but his ankle rolled as he ran and he fell to the ground in a flurry of noise and pain.

'Patrick?'

Angela's voice grew louder as she turned back towards him, her eyes filled with tears and worry as she knelt down beside him.

'Stand up,' he demanded.

'No, you're hurt.'

'Please,' he said, shifting his weight until he was resting on one knee. He ignored the throbbing pain in his ankle. Angela finally listened to his request. He slipped the small box out of his pocket and opened it in front of him. 'What I said earlier I didn't mean, I didn't want to spoil the surprise. I'm sorry that I hurt you, please, Angela. Will you marry me?'

Somewhere between the word 'yes' and a kiss, Jane placed both feet on the ground, his ankle giving way as he fell back against the sidewalk.

In the moment it took for his eyes to close, the memory ended. Jane opened his eyes and the attic was still there, his ankle still throbbed and Grace Van Pelt was stood over him holding a pack of ice.

x

The smiley face on the wall made Jane feel sick to the stomach. It wasn't the first time a Red John crime scene had made him feel so bad; every Red John case was too many. But it wasn't every day Red John killed a child. He'd only done it once before, as far as they knew, and that was when his own daughter had been the one to die. Jane doubled over, his hands on his knees as he focused on each individual breath. The resemblance to his own child hadn't escaped him. Jane glanced again at the young girl's blonde curls, her bright blue eyes fixed open, the life drawn from them.

He could feel his knees going long before they touched the ground and in seconds Jane's eyelids fluttered closed.

A room filled with shelves stood before him covered in boxes of different shapes and sizes. He walked along one of the aisles, his eyes hovering over each label. He didn't know what he was looking for but he knew that when he found it he would.

'First birthday,' he muttered, reading out labels. 'Fifth wedding anniversary.'

He kept on walking until he was deep in the depths of the room, surrounded by shelves taller than he could even imagine. He climbed a ladder upwards, searching through the memories he stored in the hardest to reach places.

He opened a box marked 'miscellaneous', a box he didn't remember keeping.

'Daddy, what's a penis?' Charlotte asked, her bright blue eyes shining up at him.

'Well,' he said, then the memory faded.

'Daddy, how big is the biggest person?'

'Bigger than me and Mommy stood on top of each other.'

He jumped back and forth between brief memories, between Charlotte's questions, each one as important as the one before. The words filled his brain, crowding it with information that he hadn't allowed himself to remember for such a long time. He tried to speak but no words came out.

Then the box closed, landing back on the shelf in its designated place and another box opened.

He walked up the stairs, his eyes dreary after the drive home. It was late and though he hadn't ate dinner, he just wanted to kiss his little girl goodnight and go to bed. But something wasn't right, he knew the second he walked through the front door that the air had changed.

'Angela?' he called softly, afraid to wake Charlotte at such late hour. He pushed open the bathroom door, in case she had opted for a late night bath, though he suspected she would probably just be asleep, like their daughter.

The note pinned to the door of their bedroom perked his curiosity. Was she playing some kind of game? Were they finally going to start trying for another baby like they'd discussed?

But the signature on the note was not Angela's, it was the mark of the devil. He didn't need to push the door open to know what was on the other side. His heart raced inside his chest, fighting with his rib cage for a way out through his skin.

When he finally opened the door and saw the lacerated bodies of his wife and daughter, he fell to the ground, his eyes closing abruptly.

He opened his eyes and there was Lisbon staring at him pushing a glass of water into his hand. She helped him to sit up and Jane tried to listen to what she was saying, but sometimes the memories were too hard to put back.

x

Sometimes when he couldn't sleep he wandered around the CBI. The attic in summer was too warm to really spend much time in, especially at night when even the thought of sleep made the room ten times warmer. Instead, he opted for the cooler confines of the floors below. He lay down on his couch but it didn't feel as comfortable as usual. Sometimes he wondered if she purposefully forced him away. After all, he'd spent a lot of time in the attic lately and though his couch was not a person, he still felt it held personified qualities.

In the end he picked the lock of Lisbon's office and rolled onto her couch. The cooler surface soothed his overheated skin. Getting a little sunburnt the day before hadn't helped matters.

Jane closed his eyes and though he knew that sleep was as elusive as Red John, he had other things in mind. The darkness behind his eyelids quickly disappeared until he found himself wandering around his memory palace.

On occasion, when he didn't have much he needed to put into storage, he liked to wander aimlessly around the carefully constructed world in his mind. His memory palace was a thing of beauty. Had it been a real life palace, he liked to think it would have been revered as one of the great wonders of the modern world.

Each step he took echoed along bright corridors made up of useless facts that he plucked out at any given moment. He liked to keep them near the entrance because of how often he found himself having to answer even the basic of questions about life.

He kept rooms of memories dedicated to people. He wandered down the corridor marked personal relationships, past doors for Rigsby, Cho and Van Pelt. Onwards under archways of brief encounters he'd had with women. Until he smiled at the large door marked Teresa Lisbon. Sometimes he liked to go in there just for the fun of reliving some of their moments, other times he liked to play games with his memories and transport them into different worlds. Sometimes he would kiss her, sometimes he would make love to her and sometimes he would sweep her off her feet at the CBI. Of course, they weren't really events that belonged in his memory palace.

He left her door untouched as he walked past family members and people he met on the carnival circuit.

Finally he stopped at the largest door. A door marked not for one person but for two: Angela and Charlotte Jane. The room where he kept everything he ever remembered about his wife or darling daughter were in boxes on shelves. He reached for the door handle but as he attempted to turn it, his fingers slid over the cool glass shape. He tried again and again until he frantically started shifting the doorknob back and forth. He had to get in. He always could and he always would. He simply would not accept that his memory palace had locked him out of the most important room.

After kicking and hitting the door, putting his whole weight against the door handle, even trying to pick a lock that didn't exist, Jane fell to the ground sobbing uncontrollably as he attempting to cling to the glass door.

He closed his eyes and in that moment a hand rested on his shoulder and he was lying on Lisbon's couch, his face damp with tears.

'I couldn't get to my memories,' he said, his voice still broken up.

'It was just a bad dream,' said Lisbon as she sat down beside him, her arm wrapped carefully around his shoulder.

'No,' Jane said, confidence and anger building in his tone. 'My memory palace won't let me get to my memories of Angela and Charlotte.'

'You've been under a lot of stress lately,' she replied, stroking back the tendrils of his hair that stuck carelessly to the damn patches on his face.

He nodded his head, hoping beyond hope that Lisbon was right.


End file.
